The 34th annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Birthday Program that honors the slain civil rights leader was celebrated on Sunday with the theme, “Remember! Celebrate! Act! A day on…not a day off.”
District 13 Sen. Willie Simmons was the keynote speaker and presented the assembly with a challenge to “Be an engine of change.”
Simmons began his talk by presenting four characters from the Old Testament of the Holy Bible that he wanted everyone to focus on as he talked about King.
He introduced Moses and identified him as a leader, Joseph as a dreamer, David as a slayer of injustices and Esther as a voice for the people and proposed that Dr. King’s character contained the embodiment of those four.
He told the audience, “Think about being an engine of change and in doing so, be Moses, those of you who have the ability and the desire to lead, lead; be Joseph, those of you who are dreamers and can dream of building the businesses that others will come to and make purchases, build them.”
Elucidating on his remaining examples, Simmons said, “Be a David, those of you who have the desire and the ability to fight the giants that’s destroying our community, drugs, crime, whatever it may be, destroy it; be an Esther, those of you who can’t do anything but get on the telephone and call somebody and say something ain’t right here, we’ve got to do something about it, be a voice.”
Using important dates from his life, the long-term state legislator walked through a chronological timeline that described the changing facets of the civil rights movement and the effects of King’s dream on the people.
The Utica native talked about the era of his birth in the late 1940s, when black people were addressed as “‘colored’ and living a life of hope in unity,” without the knowledge of King’s dream because it had not been revealed yet. From there he moved on to 1963 when he graduated from high school as a “negro boy.”
Simmons told the congregation that although his community was poor and struggling they were trying to go forward with expectation. “Dr. King’s dream, at that time, had not been revealed, but the Negro community was again living on hope and unified,” Simmons said.
However, he said that hope was shattered in April of that year when Dr. King was assassinated in Memphis.
Referencing the hope that some had placed in the Kennedy brothers, John and Robert, who were both also killed, Simmons surmised that a state of chaotic confusion engulfed black people for a time as they wondered who the next national leader would be.
Simmons said by 1973 the label had again changed and he was considered a “black man.”
It was during that time that he had returned from the Vietnam War, moved to the Delta and married his wife, Rose.
“I had gone from being colored, to Negro, Afro-American and moved into my own world as black.”
The veteran senator said that by that time some black people had started to feel as if they had arrived at King’s dream. “Because we were now living in integrated communities, we were now able to stay in the Holiday Inns and the Hiltons and all of those inns if we had the money because they had removed the signs, ‘White Only.”
He said it made them feel as if hope had come alive for the black people. He was elected to office in 1992 he said, but wasn’t sworn in as a colored baby, a Negro boy, an Afro-American young man, or a black man. “I was sworn in as a minority and I was proud of it.”
Simmons continued that as a minority senator he could see that some of the things King dreamed about were materializing, “But we, as a black community, were electing black officials, but we weren’t penetrating into the economy, that part of the dream that Dr. King was talking about where we were going to have equal opportunities at all levels, because the money was not following us,” he said.
Simmons said the political power was there, but not the economics and that caused him to be concerned. He said, “Today I am sad to report that part of what I was seeing when I was sworn in as a senator has come to become a reality in our community.”
Simmons said the community was moving away from King’s dream. “We as a race of people were dividing ourselves to the point that we were turning on each other as opposed to helping.”
He denounced the high levels of black on black crimes and killings, teen pregnancies, unemployment, school dropouts and the fact that there are more blacks in the state’s prisons than the state’s colleges.
Simmons said the people have to decide and make a commitment to take over their communities again.
“Going forward, it is us who is going to save us from us,” he said. Simmons said the communities have become the way they are because in the past, people have been acting as thermometers. “But I want you to move from being a thermometer to being a thermostat,” he said.
He challenged the audience to put 10 percent of their spending into the black community to help it thrive and become empowered. “Going forward, you want to be a thermostat and you want to change the outlook of the community and cause it to dream and be what Dr. King was dreaming of economically, you’re going to have to spend your money in your community like other folks spend their money in their community.”
Simmons stressed that he is not advocating any type of boycott, but simply a reallocation of a small portion of what they spend. He said that would cause businesses to develop and flourish. “The other 90 percent, take it where you’ve been taking it,” Simmons said.
The MLK birthday committee dedicated this year’s program to former member Clementine Williams who passed away last year. Williams had been a member of the organization for more than 25 years. Her daughters Katrina, Bridgett and Candace accepted the plaque posthumously.
In addition, the annual scholarship was awarded to Savardson Durhnam by president Foster King. And the award-winning Gentry High School Choir and the Mount Beulah Baptist Church Choir added musical selections and the Gentry High JMG class contributed a dance of creative expression.
